Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: I like chocolate

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 04:31:52 EDT

In a message dated 9/15/2002 2:42:05 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

<<
> la pycyn cusku di'e
> 
> >I have some idea what your boa is like, but I can't paint a reliable 
> >picture
> >of it yet because too many things I need to know to do a picture I don't 
> >know
> >from knowing only that it is a boa.
> 
> Then you can't make lo pixra be le mi sincrboa, but you won't
> have any trouble making lo pixra be lo'e sincrboa. There are
> of course many possible pixra be lo'e sincrboa, and they don't
> have to all look alike.
> >>

Sorry, I thought you meant an accurate picture of a generic boa, because, 
once you get away from that, it gets hard to keep up the claim that it is a 
pictue of a generic boa rather than something else that it is an accurate 
picture of. But if any old boa picture will do and we call it a picture ofa 
generic boa, then, sure, you can picture it. Since (sniggle) the picture is 
is not accurate, would a picture of a viper do as well -- or almost. (I hope 
the answer is "No" but I will be interested to hear the reason. And if the 
answer is "Yes" then I throw in the towel, ther is just no talking to some 
people so far from the rules of language).

<<
>Having a delusion is coverd by the usually safe {mi viska li'i sincrboa}

I suppose you mean {se li'i}, "I'm a visual experiencer of
something being a boa".
No, I meant {li'i} though I left out the {le} . Apparently the meaning has 
changed since the word was created by someone who lived primarily in a 
disembodied experiental mode.

<<
>(this also covers the {lo} case but does not entail it). Why is {lo'e} a
>no-no?

It is certainly not a no-no! {lo'e} is probably a yes-yes
anywhere {lo} is, though neither entails the other.
My remark was to your claim that {viska lo'e sincrboa} made no sense, or 
something along that line and was intended to indicate that, were that true, 
{pixra loe' sincrboa} made no sense and for essentially the same reasons.
When looking up "boa," by the way, I did see a picture of one in the 
dictionary, presumably meant to be typical, since it had no further specific 
identification. I was just a black-and-white sketch, so avoided the issue of 
color (I don't suppose anyone will thaink that the generic boa is white, 
though boas are in an albino sequence, I think).

<<
>If I can paint it, I can see it surely.

Not always, but in the case of boas yes, certainly.
So {viska lo'e boa} does make sense. Different from {viska lo boa}? (For 
either answer, what is special here, since generally they are different and 
generally generics are too abstract to be seen).

<<
> Either {lo'e cinfo cu xabju le
>frike} means "if anything were a lion, it would live in Africa," which is
>obviously false,

And not what I mean.
So you do keep saying. But aside from your say-so (which is not a negligible 
bit of evidence, you being right most of the time about things) you have yet 
to give an explanation of why not, in spite of repeated opportunities and 
urgings.

<<
>or it means (I have to unpack some more) "In some world
>there is something which is a lion and lives in Africa," which is -- in the
>case of lions, but not of unicorns -- of little practical value over {lo
>cinfo cu xabju le frike}.

This is not what I mean either. I don't make any claim about lions
in particular, neither in this nor in possible worlds. It's a claim
about Africa in particular and lions in general.
Notice that neither of the alternatives offered makes any claims about lions 
in paticular -- even that some exist. So, what is wrong with them? Would it 
help to replace "is a lion" with "has all the essential properties of a 
lion"? How do you know that talk about generic lions doesn't involve 
particular lions, at least hypothetical particular lions, unless you know 
fairly completely what talk about genric lions does involve? In which case, 
why are you hiding this information in your bosom? It seems self-defeating 
as well as cruel to do this.

<<
>The problem with {pixra} is that boahood pervades too few viusal
>properties to allow a picture to be made, if it is at all representational
>(and if it is not, anything goes and I have to take your word for what it
>represents and by what coding, so almost any visual image will do and the
>whole becomes really uninteresting).

So you probably would not agree that Saint-Exupéry's picture is
lo pixra be lo'e sincrboa poi ba'o tunlo lo xanto. You don't
have to take _my_ word, you have to take the word of the speakers
of the language in question: English in the case of "boa" and
Lojban in the case of {sincrboa}, though for these words there
shouldn't be much deviation from language to language, probably
more variation within English itself.
I don't have Exy's stuff to hand, so I don't know what picture you are 
talking about. But, since we are now -- in spite of all manner of hazards -- 
allowing inaccurate pictures to count, I don't see any reason to deny it -- 
unless it is too far off (to a viper, say, or a newt) I would certainly 
(with the same conditions) be willing to say that it is a picture of a boa 
(if it is, that is) and allow it to do business as a generic (rather than a 
typical) boa (though I would probably like the caveats spelled out -- "mind 
the color and the size and the exact marking pattern and...")

<<
><<
>I never said {le nu lo sfofa cu co'e} deals with particular sofas.
>I did say it deals with particular events.
> >>
>OK -- and how can there be a particular event involving sofas that does not
>invlve a particular sofa?

For example: {le nu mi nitcu lo'e sfofa cu purci}
"My needing a sofa is in the past".
Which (though ill-formed) involves a particular sofa, of course, though not 
one in this world, assuming it makes any sense at all. When did you ever 
need a generic sofa? You needed a sofa and did not care about the 
particulars, perhaps, but that is a very different thing. What would you do 
with a generic sofa -- you can't sit on it or use if for decor (it has no 
color nor pattern nor cushion density). In short, this seems no different 
from {le nu mi nitcu tu'a lo sfofa cu purci} is it is sensible at all. You 
are, apparently, going to say that it is not right because it involved {lo 
sfofa} byt notice that it does not say anything about an particular sofa(s) 
-- even that there are some (well, it says there are some in another world 
but it is hard to deal with essential properties wihtout other worlds, so 
that can't be the problem either.) We can do away with {lo sfofa} and talk 
about things with all the essential properties of sofas, satisfying the sense 
of {sfofa} -- but those are just sofas. 

<<
le nu mi nitcu lo'e sfofa is a particular event involving sofas
that does not involve a particular sofa.
So is le nu mi nitcu tu'a lo sfofa, unless you mean by "involve a particular 
sofa" "contains the words {lo sfofa}" (which, note, even as it stands, is not 
about a particular sofa -- that is {le sfofa}). But the words occur in an 
opaque, intensional, whatever context which prescisely cuts them off from any 
reference to any particulars -- as witness the lack of quantifier binding.   
"But they are particular in some other world" (two moves removed from this 
one). Maybe, but the other world is such an abstraction that it is hard to 
see what they are particular in that world" would mean. 

<<
I don't see any problem with liking an event. I think
{mi nelci le nu da sfofa} is a perfectly legitimate thing
to say. I just don't agree that {mi nelci lo'e sfofa}
is equivalent to {mi nelci lo nu lo sfofa cu co'e}. They
are both meaningful, but different.
As always, in what way? I don't see it. But then, I don't know what {mi 
nelci lo'e sfofa} means. The situations the two describe seem to me to be 
exactly the same. At least, I would normally say {mi nelci tu'a lo sfofa} 
for the situation you describe as being what {mi nelci lo'e sfofa} describes, 
unless you have failed to mention (or cleverly hidden) some detail that makes 
the difference. But I can't figure out what detail it would be that involved 
-- moe than it already is -- the sense of {sfofa}.

<<
I don't feel discomfort with {nelci le nu lo sfofa cu co'e}.
I don't think {nelci tu'a lo sfofa} is wrong.
I prefer {nelci lo'e sfofa} for "liking sofas".
{tu'a sfofa} is much more ambiguous than {lo'e sfofa}.
In some context {tu'a lo sfofa} could mean "doing it on the sofa"
for example, something which {lo'e sfofa} cannot mean.
Why the preference? What does it say that the othere doesn't? The ambiguity 
of {tu'a lo sfofa} is the ambiguity of {co'e}, but at least whe know what the 
range is there. But we -- I certainly and you i\by implication from the fact 
that you won't tell -- hae no idea what {lo'e sfofa} means . Why does it 
exclude doing it on the sofa -- we are never told, even by implication, what 
you like lo'e sfofa FOR and yet things aren't like in isolation, but for 
something, even if it is only a rosey glow.

<<
>Using {tu'a} does not literally change the level of abstraction, since
>everything is on the same level in Lojban.

I think {fasnu} and {dacti} are not synonymous. To that extent
at least nu-things are not at the same level as sofa-things.
{mlatu} and {gerku} aren't synonymous either -- which is on the higher level 
of abstaction?

<<
>And your case is ultimately
>talking about the properties of a sofa, not about sofas

I guess we will never agree about that.
OK, your case is talking about sofas. So why the big insistence that it is 
so different from other ways of talking about sofas. I think it is, mind 
you, but this suggests that you don't.